By David Perri

Brooklyn isn't exactly the first locale that comes to mind while discussing the best elements of contemporary black metal, but Brooklyn is exactly where KRALLICE calls home, the band the arbiter of black metal's most angular and jagged edges. Featuring Colin Marston of GORGUTS, BEHOLD... THE ARCTOPUS and DYSRHYTHMIA and Mick Barr of ORTHRELM (the band also includes drummer Lev Weinstein and bass player/vocalist Nick McMaster), Krallice headlined Montreal's Katakombes on April 25 in support of its latest record, Diotima, and the group received an appreciative welcome by black metal's most ardent adherents, those who know that symphonic flourishes and vampiric stylings have never been a real element of black metal's sound and ethos.

Playing after the stellar, Atlanta-based WITHERED, Krallice's live proclamation included tracks from all three of its records, and the crowd's most visceral reaction came during the 11 minute dimensional bleedthrough that was 'Cnestorial', one of Krallice's top moments of its quickly expanding catalogue. Truly engaged in the art of creating black metal as soundscape and experience, Krallice chanelled the original spectre of Olso/Bergen '91 while juxtaposing it with a sense of dialectical chaos, the band's imminent disaster a true force to be reckoned with.

Krallice's most impressive attribute is it unwillingness to write a standard, four-minute soundbite of a song and the fact that the expansive length of its tracks never seems overbearing or unnecessary is the key to Krallice's appeal. Instead, the listener becomes involved in black metal spheres and sonicscapes, the force of which Euronymous would have no doubt found intriguing and worthy of deathlike silence (in both sense of the term).

Krallice is writing important records that should be heard by more than just the discerning. On April 25, the group once again brought its artful angularity to Montreal and acted as black metal's newest ambassador, re-inventing the sub-genre in line with its own experiences and synchronicities.